Economists Tout Value of Reducing Dropouts

Published in 2/14/2007

The nation would reap more than twice the cost of wide-scale adoption of effective pre-K-12 educational interventions, resulting in a gain of $45 billion from increased tax revenues and reduced social costs over the lifetime of high school graduates, a study by a team of economists concludes.

"What we've tried to show, across a range of interventions, -' is that all of them, using very conservative assumptions about benefits, have big payoffs," said Henry M. Levin, a professor of economics and education at Teachers College, Columbia University, and the lead author of the report.

For More Info "The Costs and Benefits of an Excellent Education for All of America's Children" is posted by the Center for Benefit-Cost Studies of Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. This article appeared in the February 14, 2007 edition of the Ed Week. http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/02/14/23levin.h26.html